Moral-Values Politics: From Status Group Conflict to Institutionalized Party-Movement Electoral System more

Moral-Values Politics: From Status Group Conflict to Institutionalized PartyMovement Electoral System1 Steven Brint and Seth Abrutyn University of California, Riverside Historical sociologists interested in “moral-values politics” in the United States have focused on episodic outbreaks of campaigns against drink, vice, and corruption, in which the dominant Protestant majority has asserted traditional, ascetic moral standards in the face of the pleasure-seeking enjoyments and alternative cultural norms of urban, working-class, and immigrant groups. The idea of conflict over moral values as Protestant status assertion against the backdrop of rising Catholic and immigrant strata can be found, for example, in Gusfield’s (1962) work on the “symbolic politics” of the Temperance movement and in Beisel’s (1990) work on “moral panics” in urban campaigns against vice. Some analyses of the contemporary religious Right have also adopted the status-group conflict interpretation (see, e.g., Evans 1996). These interpretations are indebted to the Weberian theme that status politics arise during periods in which economic growth brings challenges to the dominant status group. In this view, “moral values” campaigns can be interpreted as symbolic reassertions of the dominance and prestige of white Protestant culture.2 A classical statement of the status politics position is found in Richard Hofstadter’s (1955) essay “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt”: “We have at all times, two kinds of processes going on in inextricable connection to each other: interest politics, the clash of material aims and needs among various groups and blocs; and status politics, the clash of various projective 1 rationalizations arising from status aspirations and other personal motives. In times of depression and economic discontent…politics more clearly a matter of interests…In times of prosperity and general well-being on the material plane, status considerations among the masses can become much more influential in our politics…” (p. 84). Contemporary conditions require reconsideration of these classic arguments with respect both to agency and causality. In this paper, we will argue that recent moralvalues politics in the United States cannot be interpreted solely – or even primarily – as an assertion of traditionalist white Protestant status culture in the face of perceived threats to social order. Instead, as a result of political entrepreneurship (Layman 2001: chap. 3) and partisan competition in a narrowly divided polity (Baker 2005: chap. 3), moral-values conflict has become institutionalized as a regular feature of American political life, embodied in the activities of political parties and social movement organizations throughout the electoral cycle – during economic expansion and downturn alike. These changes are largely the result of improved technologies for monitoring and mobilizing public opinion, combined with stronger, albeit imperfect, coordination between the Republican Party, religious Right social movement organizations, and broader conservative movement organizations. What we have seen over the last 30 years is a successful, if tenuous, effort to institutionalize symbolism resonant with white evangelical Protestants as foundation from which to extend Republican Party control. This era culminated in the election of the conservative Republican and “born-again” Christian George W. Bush in 2000. 2 This paper draws from a wide range of sources, including published studies, original analyses of survey data, and original content analyses of speeches and websites to develop a synthetic picture of contemporary moral-values politics in the United States. We will begin with a brief discussion of the meaning of moral values in contemporary American political discourse. We will then provide a critique of the status politics argument and develop our alternative to it. We will describe the role of three interacting sets of actors in the current system: the Christian conservative base, the Republican Party, and religious Right social movement organizations. We will conclude by discussing the evidence for a possible weakening of the Republican-Christian conservative alliance as a force in American political life. MORAL VALUES IN RECENT AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE Several polling firms have asked Americans to describe what the term “moral values” means to them. In one such study, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (2005) asked respondents to choose from a list that included phrases drawn from several discourse domains. The most popular choice was “personal values, such as honesty and responsibility” (36%). “Family values, such as trying to protect children from sex and violence on TV and the Internet” was the next most popular choice (26%). Other choices, with more explicit religious connections, were selected by fewer respondents. These included one set of values connected to conservative religion, “social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage” (10%); and one set of values connected to liberal religion, “social justice, such as preventing human rights abuses and discrimination” (10%). 3 The distribution of responses shows that referents resonating with evangelical Protestantism (“social issues” and “family values”) were approximately twice as likely to be chosen as referents resonating more directly with Catholic and Jewish religious traditions and with the sensibilities of minorities (“social justice” and “caring and compassion”).3 Other studies using open-ended questions about the meaning of “moral values” have yielded a similar mix of references to personal qualities, “family values,” social issues, social justice, compassion and caring, and Christian religion (Democracy Corps 2005). In these cases as well, responses resonating with evangelical Protestantism were more than twice as frequent as referents to social justice or compassion. ______________________________________________________________________ Table 1 Meaning of “Moral Values” A. All Voting Age Adults 1. Closed-Ended Question Percent of those polled mentioning: Personal Qualities (e.g., honesty) Family Values (e.g. protecting kids from sex and violence) Social issues (e.g., abortion, gay marriage) Social justice (e.g., ending discrimination) Compassion and Caring All of the above (volunteered) (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner 2005) B. Voters for whom Moral Values Were Important in Vote 1. Open-Ended Question: “very important in vote” (45% of those polled) 2. Open-Ended Question: “most important in vote”(36% of those polled) 36% 26% 10% 10% 9% 9% 2. Open-Ended Question1 Percent of those polled mentioning: Personal Qualities Family Values Social issues Social justice Religious faith Compassion and caring (Democracy Corps 2005) 28% 22% 14% 10% 8% 7% 4 (multiple responses allowed)2 Percent of those polled mentioning: Social issues Personal Qualities Religious faith/Christianity Social justice/Equal rights Family values Compassion and caring (Harris Interactive 2004) Notes 1 (single response allowed) Percent of those polled mentioning: 51% 34% 33% 21% 14% 6% Gay marriage Abortion Personal qualities Religion/faith Traditional/family values Other policies (Pew Research Center 2004) 29% 28% 23% 18% 17% 9% Personal qualities include: honesty; integrity; honor; knowing right from wrong; standing up for what you believe; doing the right thing. Family values include: family/home (unspecified); respecting and valuing life (abortion not mentioned); taking good care of children. Social issues include: abortion; homosexuality; fidelity in marriage. Social justice includes: taking care of people in need; helping the less fortunate; tolerance for others. Religious faith includes: religion; faith; Christianity; belief in God. Compassion and caring includes: treating other people well; following the Golden Rule; compassion. 2 Social issues include: protecting marriage between a man and a woman; homosexuality; same sex marriages; abortion; stem cell research. Personal values include: honesty; integrity; good morals/ethics. Religious faith includes: belief in God; faith; religion; Christian attitude; Biblical values; following the Ten Commandments; maintaining Christian foundation of the U.S.; school prayer. Social justice includes: equality; civil rights; issues of peace and war; helping those less fortunate; human rights; health care for all; religious freedom. Family values includes family morals/values; caring for families. Compassion and caring includes caring; respect for others; compassion. _______________________________________________________________________ _ The capacity of conservatives to associate the term “moral values” with evangelical Protestant meanings is a significant achievement. After all, every religious tradition has distinctive teachings about right and wrong, and every tradition also has a complex history of exegetical and hermeneutic texts related to these teachings. Traditions of secular ethics also exist, of course, and have offered bases for grounding 5 morality, not in religion, but rather in universalistic principles of Enlightenment (Kant [1784] 1985), social obligations (Durkheim [1893] 1997), dialogical ethics (Buber [1923] 1958), a utilitarian calculus (Smith [1759] 1986; Bentham [1789] 1973), or neural “hardwiring” acquired during human evolution (Hauser 2006). In contemporary American political discourse, “moral values” operate as a condensation symbol resonant with three separate sources of Republican Party appeal: “family values,” which are particularly attractive to church-going married people with children; “social issues,” such as gay marriage and abortion, which are appealing to activist evangelicals; and the more diffuse status credit extended to politicians for subscribing to beliefs rooted in conservative Christian religious traditions. The phrase has strength as a cue for party identifications, because it draws in several distinct constituencies in the Republican Party coalition, while simultaneously defining several constituencies in the Democratic Party coalition as less moral – or even, by implication, immoral. For people who are very religious those who are “secular” are natural antagonists, and this latter group (approximately 15 percent of the electorate) is an important constituency in the Democratic coalition. Family-oriented conservatives disapprove of single parents, and those who are cohabitating outside of marriage. These latter groups also favor the Democratic Party by wide margins. Conservatives who are interested in social policy issues such as abortion and gay marriage, have as their natural opponents feminists and homosexuals, two other groups on the liberal-left. The achievement of conservative moral-values rhetoric is particularly impressive because those who are strongly attracted to it represent a minority in American society, no more than 40 to 45 percent of all adults. Nor are the demographic groups who are the 6 primary audiences for this rhetoric more numerous than those who are outside its symbolic perimeter. White evangelical Protestants (approximately 25% of the population), regular church attenders (no more than 30%), and people living in traditional nuclear family arrangements with a partner and children (just over 30%) are all numerical minorities when compared to non-evangelicals (Green et al. 2005), those who do not attend church or attend irregularly (Presser and Stinson 1998), and unmarried or childless people (Hobbs 2005). MORAL VALUES IN A PARTY-MOVEMENT ELECTORAL SYSTEM We see a number of weaknesses in the status group conflict model when applied to the contemporary era. Members of racial and cultural minority groups have hardly been assertive since the mid-1970s; instead, they have largely been on the defensive (see, e.g., Jenkins, Jacobs, and Agnone 2003; Piven and Cloward 1982; Wilson 1987).4 Moralvalues politics has persisted during periods of economic expansion and recession alike. Indeed, the greatest influence of the Christian conservative movement has occurred during a period of sustained weakness in the economic prospects of lower and middleincome, non-college educated whites. These people make up the largest segment of the white evangelical population (Frank 2006; see also Gopoian and Whitehead 2005).5 The idea that the social base gives rise to social movement organizations acting in its name is itself a problematic formulation. In the contemporary religious Right, a division of labor existed from the beginning, with religious conservatives specializing in the mobilization of church groups and Republican Party leaders specializing in the training of candidates to appeal to these mobilized church groups. Even prior to the candidacy and presidency 7 of George W. Bush, the Republican Party proved able to shape the symbolic environment in which movement politics took place. We will argue that the control of the party has been significant enough to reject the conventional social movements-led model of the influence of conservative Christians during the period that began with the founding of the Christian Coalition in 1989. The primary difficulty with the status group model is its failure to look at politics from an organizational perspective. Such a perspective allows for the appreciation of the workings of centralized, technologically sophisticated political party organizations. In a democratic system, the achievement of executive power provides many resources for the cooptation and coordination of constituency organizations, including social movement organizations. Even during periods in which the party is out of power, coordination between party and constituency organizations can grow, thereby preparing the way for a future capture of executive power. Political party organizations have the financial resources, the data on party identifiers, the recruitment and training networks for candidates and activists, and the policy discussion networks to coordinate constituency organizations and status groups in the service of achieving the party’s electoral and policy objectives. Against the earlier models of status group conflict, we therefore posit the construction, beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of a more durable, more centrally-coordinated structure of moral-values politics. In its origins, the party-movement system was led by religious Right social movement organizations and their conservative allies on talk radio. Religious Right social movement organizations, such as the Moral Majority (founded 1979), Concerned Women for America (1979), the American Coalition for Traditional Values (1980), and 8 the Family Research Council (1983), developed a set of issues to contest in the public arena, including opposition to abortion, gay rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment; opposition to “judicial activism,” and support for prayer and disciplinary standards in schools and for representations of religious symbols in the public square. These groups proved that voters could be mobilized through appeals to Christian religious sensibilities and moral-values issues. They specialized in building networks of activists and mobilization around issues. Many of the techniques of the contemporary party-movement systems were developed by leaders of social movement organizations. These included Congressional scorecards, targeted mailers, and the building of grassroots local chapters, the latter a rarity in modern American political life. Between 1992 and 2000, the voter guide was the chief weapon of the religious Right as a grassroots coalition. These were distributed to an estimated 40 million voters in 1992 showing where candidates stood on issues like abortion, gay rights, prayer in schools, and other issues appealing to conservatives (Kuo 2006: 65). In the early and mid-1990s, church directories were often used for get-outthe-vote telephone drives and door-to-door canvassing. Politicians credited the voting guides with changing elections by five to seven percentage points. The 40 million voter guides prepared in the watershed year of 1994 were distributed to 100,000 churches (though some were left unopened in bulk). Religious right organizations also pioneered techniques for reaching voters on the issues they cared most about through sophisticated surveying and targeted mailing. Religious Right organizations held regional and national conferences to build commitment and social ties among sympathetic ministers and church leaders. These methods were later adopted by Republican Party strategists. 9 Social movement organizations also pioneered tactics for control of state party committees, beginning in the presidential campaign of the televangelist Pat Robertson in 1988. These tactics centered on filling low-turnout meetings with dependable social conservatives who had the time and stamina to outlast their opponents and then elect themselves to important posts. Religious Right organizations had, by one estimate, gained majority control of 18 state Republican committees by the mid-1990s, together with “substantial” influence in 13 others (Green, Guth, and Wilcox 1998).6 Religious Right organizations encouraged evangelical Christians to align with the Republican Party, because Republican Party leaders, beginning with Ronald Reagan, took positions on moral-values issues consistent with movement positions. Republican Party politicians also courted the religious Right, even if they were not very vocal about their support in public and did not promote the religious Right agenda vigorously when in office. By contrast, religious Right leaders demonized the Democratic Party as a godless, anti-family party beholden to the far left and the bohemian values of Hollywood and other “liberal elite” enclaves. At the same time, the Republican Party and its allied organizations nurtured these religious Right social movement organizations and contributed directly to their success. The Christian Coalition (1989), under the leadership of the televangelist Pat Robertson and his chief lieutenant, Ralph Reed, spearheaded the second wave of organization. The Christian Coalition received funds from the Republican National Committee, and Reed worked closely with Party leaders throughout the period of his involvement with the organization (Easton 2000). Para-party organizations, such as Empower America and the Heritage Foundation, played a distinct role in forging a bond between religious Right 10 leaders and Republican Party politicians. These groups specialized in marketing, data dissemination, and (in the case of Empower America) candidate training. Empower America provided data about “moral decline” through its influential Index of Leading Cultural Indicators (Bennett 1993), and it trained politicians to run campaigns that could be perceived as moderate enough to appeal to independents, but conservative enough to gain the enthusiastic support of evangelicals. According to a one-time staffer, Empower America helped to focus Republicans on culture, realizing that issues such as religious discrimination, abortion, and “Hollywood values” appealed strongly to religious conservatives. In 1993 and 1994, Empower American trained more than 600 candidates on how to run for office. More than 300 won in the Republican tide of 1994. Empower America told candidates to use code to keep religious discussion general, not specific, and to use “softer, more nuanced language such as phrases from parables” to signal religious voters without alienating Republican moderates and independents (Kuo 2006: 62-63). In this paper, we will focus on the workings of the mature party-movement system that arose during the George W. Bush presidency. We will emphasize the important continuing role of social movement organizations in promoting conservative policies, sustaining commitment among grassroots activists, and serving as a conduit to the grassroots for the party. However, leadership and direction of the movement shifted during this period from religious Right social movement organizations to the White House and the Republican Party. The mature system has some characteristics of a political machine, including patronage, but it also differs in some important respects from classical political machines. 11 The Social Base For sociologists, feelings of social superiority are the foundation out of which positively privileged status groups develop. White evangelical Protestants indicate feelings of humility in relation to God, yet many feel morally elevated in relation to other groups in American society (Smith et al. 1996). Their claims to status in American society are supported, at the deepest level, by their membership in the dominant racial and religious groups in the country. But in a more proximate way they are most strongly supported by their convictions of acting (or of striving to act) in harmony with the commands of Christian morality. The Christian conservative movement is, at the same time, a product of the historical development of American identity politics. Religion has only recently come back into focus as an element in these politics. The backlash politics of the 1960s focused instead on the urban white working class in the North (the so-called “hardhats”) and on race-conscious “states-rights” conservatives in the South (see, e.g., Edsall 1985). Religion became central as an element in American identity politics only in the late 1970s as Civil Rights and student protest subsided as political forces in the Northern states, and as the South became a wealthier region and otherwise more like the rest of the United States (Marsden 2006: 236-239). As racial, class, and sectional identities receded in significance, Christian conservatives emerged as a mobilized identity category largely through the work of social movement organizations operating in the receptive milieu of theologically conservative church communities. Leaders of the religious Right during the Robertson-Reed era also made a conscious effort to reach out beyond older religious conservatives to younger, suburban and more affluent people with children. These 12 people were strongly motivated by concerns about the cultural environment to which their children were exposed in the media and the schools. Among its strongest adherents, conservative Protestantism is restrictive on issues of sexuality, at least “softly” patriarchal in relation to gender roles (Wilcox 2004), judgmental in relation to those perceived as holding lax moral standards, and life transforming in orientation. These outlooks, recreated by doctrine and reinforced by small town and suburban life in which churches are primary community-binding institutions, resonate strongly among the 25 to 35 percent of the electorate that selfidentifies as evangelical Protestants (Green et al. 2005). Politically, the most important features of the culture have been the vision of ideal social organization that it holds, and the strong feelings of disapproval it directs against individuals and groups perceived to be failing to live up to a righteous way of living. For theological conservatives, the Christian community is also “world-transforming” on the basis of following God’s plan for humanity; those who have strayed from a righteous path of living are sinful and should be saved, if possible, or marginalized, if they are beyond salvation. The content of moral-values discourse emphasizes actions in the world that demonstrate the superior qualities of activist Christianity and the special place that God has determined for the American nation led by upright Christians. Individual autonomy is prized, but in the context of a high level of culturally-defined perfectionism in daily life, particularly related to sexual morality, self-control, and devotion to the family unit and the church community. Activist Protestantism has been highly attuned to the contrasting examples of the impure and impious, and it has encouraged feelings of superiority to those lacking ascetic virtues. The connection between desires for purity 13 and fears of pollution are in all likelihood psychologically heightened in religions that expect strict compliance from ordinary believers.7 These feelings of moral elevation are potently combined with feelings of exclusion from the mainstream of American culture. White evangelicals frequently feel themselves to be on the periphery of American society, a circumstance not dissimilar to that of an ethnic group rooted in a traditional culture not accepted by the dominant society (see also Smith et al. 1998). They feel that their practices and beliefs are not well understood by secular society, that they are disrespected by the larger society, and because of this they are psychologically estranged from the larger society. The social psychology of moral superiority combined with perceived peripheral status fuels an oppositional culture among the members of a group that many outside observers mistakenly see as the dominant status group in the United States. It is no surprise that the language of the civil rights movement permeates the language of the Christian conservative movement, including similar demands for equality, respect, and acceptance of cultural diversity. Moral values serve as a primary cognitive-emotional link between conservative Christian religious groups and the Republican Party. White, church-going evangelical Protestants have been attached to the Republican Party through the party’s appeals on abortion, gay rights, and the public role of religion since the early 1980s. The terms “Christian” and “values voter” have become nearly synonymous with conservative positions on these and related issues. Moral-values appeals have also shown the capacity to attract non-evangelical voters. Independent voters frequently approve of Democratic positions on governmental activity to ameliorate social and environmental problems, but 14 they have been closer to Republicans on these socio-cultural issues and sentiments. In recent years, church-going Catholics, Hispanic Protestants, Orthodox Jews, and even African-Americans affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention have shown signs of growing support for the Republican Party and Republican Party candidates, largely because of their efforts to reach out to faith communities (Green et al. 2005). _______________________________________________________________________ _ Table 2 Two-Party Presidential Vote in 2004 by Ethno-Religious Category A. Bush Groups % Population Evangelicals: Regular Church Attenders1 Mormons (and “Other Christians”) Catholics: Regular Church Attenders Mainline Protestants: Regular Church Attenders Evangelicals: Irregular Church Attenders2 Latino Protestants Mainline Protestants: Irregular Church Attenders Catholics: Irregular Church Attenders Total Bush Groups B. Kerry Groups % Population African-American Protestants 9.6% Mainline Protestants: Infrequent Church Attenders3 4.7% “Other Faiths” (e.g. Muslim, Hindu) 2.7% Jews 1.9% Seculars & Unaffiliated 16.0% Latino Catholics 4.5% Catholics: Infrequent Church Attenders 5.0% Evangelicals: Infrequent Church Attenders 2.9% Total Kerry Groups Notes 1 2 % Bush 88% 80% 72% 68% 64% 63% 58% 55% Turnout 63% 60% 77% 78% 52% 49% 68% 58% 12.6% 2.7% 4.4% 4.3% 10.8% 2.8% 7.0% 8.1% 52.7% % Kerry 83% 78% 77% 73% 72% 69% 69% 52% Turnout 50% 71% 62% 87% 52% 43% 70% 65% 47.3% reported church attendance weekly or more often reported church attendance once or twice a month to a few times a year 15 3 reported church attendance seldom or never Source: Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, Post-Election Sample (n=2730) __________________________________________________________________ Public opinion polls show that white evangelical Protestants are the most conservative group in the United States on moral-values issues. They express markedly conservative views on heterosexual and homosexual relations, and on abortion and endof-life issues. They also strongly favor an expanded role for religion in the public sphere, including prayer in school and religious displays in public spaces (such as posting the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and erecting crèche scenes at Christmas time). Religious Catholics also express markedly conservative views on abortion and end-of-life issues. Both religiosity (as measured by frequency of church attendance) and “moral absolutism” (as measured by the propensity to resist any change in Biblically-sanctioned moral standards) are strongly and independently connected to conservative positions, controlling for religious denomination and other significant covariates (Bolzendahl and Brooks 2005; Langer and Cohen 2005; Loftus 2001). We conducted an analysis of moral-values attitudes based on data drawn from the General Social Survey (GSS) 1980-2004. We examined an item on the acceptability of homosexuality and scales measuring attitudes on heterosexual morality, gender roles, abortion, end-of-life issues, and the role of religion in society.8 Our analysis showed common patterns of division among Americans on each of the six attitude domains: regular church attenders and Republicans were significantly more conservative on each scale and on the homosexuality item. White Protestants from conservative denominations were significantly more conservative on issues of sex, abortion, and endof-life. Catholics were more conservative on issues of abortion and end-of-life. By 16 contrast, younger people and more educated people were more liberal on all issues, and women were more liberal than men on issues of gender roles, homosexuality, and abortion.9 In every case, people who expressed an absolutist cognitive style, measured here as a literalist interpretation of the Bible, were more conservative than others.10 Moreover, racial attitudes were significantly entangled with attitudes on gender and sexuality; those who expressed high levels of social distance from blacks were more conservative on attitudes concerning gender roles and sexuality. To be sure, white evangelical Protestants express a relatively wide range of opinion in one-on-one conversations (Smith et al. 1998). Moreover, some of the modal views in the group do not conform to the stereotypes many on the left hold of them as a monolithic right-wing population: For example, white evangelical Protestants show a willingness to devote governmental resources to the amelioration of poverty, and most support abortion in cases in which the mother’s health is threatened. Class divisions are more pronounced among white evangelical Protestants than in other religious groups (Greeley and Hout 2006). Even so, the range of evangelical Protestant opinion is restricted when compared to other religious and secular groups (Woodberry and Smith 1998). More important, the inchoate ideas of individual “rank-and-file” evangelical Christians can be effectively aggregated in support for party candidates through the political technologies available to social movement and political party organizations. These analyses contribute to a long line of research showing sharp divisions among whites between people anchored, either by experience or loyalty, in the moral traditions of religious, small town, Republican white America and those whose lives are not anchored in these experiences and loyalties (see, e.g., Brint 1994: chap. 5; C. Brooks 17 2002; Brooks and Manza 2004; Bolzendahl and Brooks 2005; Hunter 1992; Layman 2001). The white evangelical Protestant social base can be organized because it is situated in a common milieu, conservative church and small town or suburban communities, and is steeped in a broadly similar religious doctrine and cultural outlook. From the perspective of the Republican Party, the significance of the Christian conservative social base lies in its willingness to turn out and vote for candidates of the party at election time and to participate in get-out-the-vote campaigns. White evangelicals have been a reliable element of the Republican Party coalition, turning out in higher numbers than many other groups and voting 70 percent or more of the time for Republican candidates. They represent a large bloc of voters, and they are the most reliably Republican voters of any bloc. In recent elections, they have provided a little more than a third of the Republican vote nationally. Regular church-goers from mainline Protestant and Catholic traditions are smaller blocs, but they are also reliably Republican. The same “faith and family” messages that appeal to white evangelicals also appeal to these groups. The reputation of Republicans as supporters of moral-values issues and the reputation of liberal Democrats as opponents of these issues is by now so well engrained that religious voters need few reminders that the Republican Party supports their causes and that the Democratic Party is in the hands of secular humanists and hedonistic liberals who oppose them. The Party National parties cannot win elections by appealing to the sentiments of a single group, and particularly not to a group as controversial as the religious Right. Politicians 18 who are too closely associated with the religious Right rarely win elections. For this reason, most politicians avoid the appearance of a close association with the religious Right. Politicians will declare their fellowship with conservative Christians only in private meetings. Nevertheless, the national Republican Party has proven an able manager of Christian conservative support. It has vastly extended outreach programs to conservative Christian communities, and it has brought many more Christians into the White House for social and political events. It has included Christian conservative leaders as never before in regular briefings on White House and Republican Party priorities. It has successfully focused on a few values issues, like abortion and gay marriage, which have crossover appeal to other groups, while working to keep less popular moral-values issues, such as changes in divorce and pornography laws, off the agenda. The Party has developed rhetoric for appealing to white evangelicals without mentioning religion directly. It has also distributed patronage through appointments to federal agencies and the judiciary, and through funding of faith-based and faith-related social programs. Outreach and Coordination. The White House is designed to service every important constituency in the country. Religious leaders are an important constituency in the United States and special briefings have been organized for them from the beginning of the modern presidency. Charles Colson described his experience with religious interest groups in the early 1970s, before the rise of the new religious Right: “I arranged briefings in the Roosevelt Room for religious leaders, ushered wide-eyed denominational leaders into the Oval Office for private sessions with the president, and even arranged 19 dinner cruises on the presidential yacht for key leaders…From these meetings grew very agreeable alliances” (Colson, quoted in Kuo 2006: 171).11 The extent of outreach expanded significantly in the Bush White House. A steady stream of national Christian leaders were given briefings and presented with presidential mugs and pins. These briefings were often led by Timothy Goeglein, Special Assistant to President Bush and Deputy Director of Public Liaison. One such briefing for 30 leaders of the national Apostolic (Pentecostal and Charismatic) church associations was described by an official of the Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ. The meeting began with the Pledge of Allegiance with stress on the “under God” portion: “The consistent theme presented throughout the day was that the United States is at a critical point in history. Strong, value-oriented leadership must be continued. America is at an important crossroads and the right path must be taken” (Martin 2004). During the meeting, church leaders were briefed by a national security advisor on the “War on Terror,” by a State Department official on Israel and the Middle East, by a political affairs official on President Bush’s “strong leadership” and the “imperative” that people of faith remain engaged in politics; and by a domestic policy advisor on the social consequences of same-sex marriage in Sweden. Goeglein ended the session by discussing the need to end filibusters on pro-life judges and by emphasizing that the main issue in the United States was the “issue of values, values that must be preserved.” During the years of Republican ascendancy, annual events such as the National Prayer Breakfast (begun in 1953) have grown into larger enterprises, with 3000 church and international dignitaries now attending (Sharlet 2003). 20 The Republican Party and the White House also sent out emissaries to church communities. As part of its efforts to inform religious and non-profit leaders about its “compassion” agenda, the White house held dozens of conferences in politically important states. According to a former White House aide, an average of 1500 people per conference received information, materials, and resources. All were leaders of larger organizations – and most went back to their organizations impressed by how much the President and his staff cared about their concerns” (Kuo 2006: 171-2). As part of the outreach effort, White House deputies held weekly – and sometimes more frequent -- conference calls with leaders of the religious Right to provide updates on Administration projects and priorities, and to solicit feedback. According to Kuo, regulars on the call included the director of public policy for Focus on the Family; the head of the National Association of Evangelicals; the publisher of the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis; the director of Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice; the head of the Family Research Council; the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; and two Christian radio talk show hosts (ibid. 170-1). “Talking points were distributed and advice was solicited. The advice rarely went any further…The true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy” (ibid. 171). Similar weekly meetings to communicate and shape strategy were held between evangelical leaders, sympathetic Congressional leaders, and Republican Party officials (Tumulty and Cooper 2005). Christian Coalition and other movement activists were also drawn into the Party’s orbit through invitations to events like the Americans for Tax Relief Wednesday meetings (Cassidy 2005), Heritage Foundation and American 21 Enterprise Institute seminars, and the Conservative Political Action Conference. Policy forums like these help to build elite cohesion through their focus on a common set of topics, the sense of belonging they encourage, and the informal social ties they produce (Domhoff 2002). Issue Management. In our model of the party-movement electoral system, the Republican Party filters and edits policy ideas with public opinion in mind. Before endorsing policy ideas, strategists consider the distribution of public opinion, the degree to which issues create strong emotions for activists on either side of the issue, and the likelihood of divisions among members of the opposing party. The political party emphasizes only a handful, among all possible moral-values issues, and works to keep the focus on those issues. The party redirects moral-values policies that have a more limited appeal to those who have a special interest in them, while attempting to minimize their salience at the national level. Polarized issues play an important role in this system. Our analysis of 2004 data from three major national surveys indicates that, while only a few issues were polarized by party identification or self-described political ideology (liberal v. conservative), no fewer than 40 percent of attitude items on each survey were either “polarized” or “possibly polarized” by ethno-religious identifications.12 We define “polarized” as at least two-thirds of one group favoring a position and two-thirds of another opposing that position within 95% confidence intervals for the subgroups. We define “possibly polarized” as issues on which a two-thirds/two-thirds split would be statistically possible within the upper and lower bounds of the 95% confidence intervals for the subgroups, 22 clearly a much weaker test. Each survey included at least 60 attitude items. Some divisive issues lie outside the moral-values and national security domains and have to do instead with race, poverty, inequality, and government spending. However, depending on the survey, between half and two-thirds of all polarized or borderline polarized items involved attitudes on moral-values or national security issues, and, not surprisingly, on these items the most frequently divided groups were regular church-attending white evangelical Protestants, on one side, and religiously unaffiliated and “secular” people, on the other. On the General Social Survey, for example, gaps of 50 percentage points or more separated these groups on issues such as prayer in school, pornography, teen access to birth control, gender roles, abortion, and standards regulating the end of life (Brint and Abrutyn 2007). On many of these issues, such as the permissibility of abortion and teenage sex, the views of white evangelicals and the religiously unaffiliated have been sharply divided going back to the 1970s. Some issues (notably acceptance of homosexuality) have been trending in a more liberal and Democratic direction; others (such as opposition to abortion and support for prayer in school) have been trending in a more conservative and Republican direction. The most important feature of polarized issues is not the trend line, however, but rather the extent to which positions supported by white evangelicals are also supported in the broader population. The majority of Americans tilt toward evangelicals on issues of abortion and homosexuality; while they tilt toward seculars on issues of premarital sex, divorce, pornography, and control of end of life issues. Polarized issues favoring the evangelical position have become featured in partisan political conflicts advanced by 23 Republican Party politicians, while those that tilt toward the Democratic Party have generally been minimized. Examined from the point of view of the Republican Party, these winning, nonconsensus issues have had the following characteristics: public opinion is supportive of the party (though often narrowly); divisions exist in the opposing party’s coalition; and a constituency subgroup feels very strongly about the issue. In recent years, the moralvalues issues of gay marriage and abortion have fit the profile, as have “tough-minded” foreign policies, including the Patriot Act and (until early 2005) the war in Iraq. A major discovery by Republican strategists has been that wedge issues are winning issues, if public opinion tilts at least slightly in favor of the party. Wedge issues not only turn out fervent supporters; they bring out opponents, who thereby become visible and can be demonized for the benefit of attracting moderate, but conservative-leaning “swing voters.”13 This process of symbolic interaction requires visible, threatening others to activate fears. Wedge issues reliably create these visible others.14 The Republican Party has also benefited from a second type of moral-values issue. Exploitable, consensus issues are characterized by strong support throughout the electorate, particularly strong support within the dominant party coalition, and divisions within the opposition party about the validity of appealing to voters on these issues. In the moral-values domain, the most general reference to faith and family issues favor Republicans. Religious belief and support for heterosexual marriage are favored by three-quarters or more of all Americans, and by majorities or near-majorities in all subgroups. 24 In the highly rationalized system of American political campaigning, it may seem surprising that these issues can provide advantages to a particular political party. However, advocacy of consensus positions can be effective if the opposition party does not counter, either because mobilized minorities within the party coalition are opposed to adopting the consensus position, or because statements would violate matters of party principle. Republicans’ emphasis on the importance of having two parents raising children is a good example of an exploitable consensus issue. Four out of five Americans agree with this position, including a sizable majority of Democrats. Social science evidence is also largely supportive of this view (see, e.g., Entwistle, Alexander and Olsen 1997: chap. 5; Waite and Gallagher 2000). Key constituencies within the Democratic coalition represent single parents and poor people and would like to keep the focus of social policy on poverty rather than family structure. Similarly, many Democrats have been reluctant to talk about faith for fear of alienating secular supporters, or because of principled positions about the separation of church and state. Because Democrats have been reluctant until recently to express majority views about faith and family, Republicans found it easy to paint them as members of an irreligious, anti-family party. With the cooperation of social movement organizations, party leaders can provide oxygen to issues by mentioning them in press releases and speeches, or they can reduce the oxygen in the case of unpopular issues. The rhetorical emphases and themes of party leaders (duly transmitted by the press corps) are signals to allies in social movement organizations about issues that are politically viable. Our analysis of speeches by eight Republican politicians to religious Right organizations shows that three topics were most 25 frequently mentioned: homosexuality (multiple references in half of the speeches); abortion (multiple references in half of the speeches); and traditional families (at least one reference in five of the speeches). Other moral-values issues (such as divorce laws, pornography, and abstinence) were rarely mentioned. The references in these speeches to religious Right organizations also differed from those speeches to broader conservative movement audiences. In the latter cases, references to national security, terrorism, and government spending were far more common, and moral-values issues were rarely mentioned. Terrorism, judicial “activism,” and public religious expression were the only issues that crossed audience lines.15 In Table 3, we provide the results of a Lexis-Nexis search for the period March 1 through Election Day 2004 on a set of moral-values issues. The table shows that coverage of moral-values issues in the months leading up to the election was both extensive and skewed to the issues with which most Americans agreed. One as yet unanswered question is why the press corps has been so interested in these issues at election time. Possible reasons include the narrative power of stylized controversies, access dependencies, and partisan sympathies. _______________________________________________________________________ Table 3 Newspaper/Magazine Coverage of Moral-Values Issues, 2004 Issue Abortion “Christian Values” Family Values Gay Marriage Gay Adoption Lexis-Nexis Counts 6000+ 6000+ 6000+ 6000+ 330 26 Divorce Law Prayer in School Pornography Laws Abstinence Pledges for Teens Decency Laws 322 198 166 82 21 Source: Lexis-Nexis U.S. Newspaper and Magazine Database, March 2004-Election Day 2004 ______________________________________________________________________ Tailored Rhetoric. Republican Party candidates are willing to declare their commitment to the “culture of life” and to the idea that “marriage is between a man and a woman.” They are less often willing to talk about the importance that faith plays in their lives. George W. Bush played down his religious faith in public. According to a former White House aide, “While Bush said the right things when asked about the issues, he didn’t dwell on them. On abortion, for instance, he embraced the conservative Christian position, saying he was against it except in special circumstances, and he was in favor of a constitutional amendment banning abortions. Yet he quickly followed that statement by saying that Americans wouldn’t go for it and it was pointless to talk about it” (Kuo 2006: 124). Religious Right leaders, beginning with the Christian Coalition’s Ralph Reed, counseled their candidates throughout the 1990s to follow the same course. Out of the public eye, candidate George W. Bush met with religious leaders and spoke to church groups. In these meetings, he emphasized his personal faith. He told believers the story of his drinking and his redemption. Throughout his presidency he followed this same approach – quietly reassuring Christian leaders and audiences of his passionate personal faith, while trying to preserve a moderate public image. “For the pastors with whom he spoke, it was all they needed to hear. George Bush was a brother 27 in Christ, a sinner who had been redeemed… More than anything, they wanted a good Christian in the White House. The story he told Christians wasn’t a story. He was giving them his testimony.” (ibid. 125). A good part of the Party’s effort in the moral-values arena is to signal belief to Christian audiences without alienating moderates. One mechanism has been the use of quotations from the Bible that do not raise alarms among moderates. Thus, the speeches of Republican Party politicians include phrases such as the following: “An America that recognizes the infinite worth of every individual and leaves the 99 to find the one stray lamb,” “the American family, the rock upon which this country was founded,” “We have this land and are told to be good stewards of it and to be good stewards of each other,” “There’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” As Kuo observes, each one of these examples “conveys Christianity without…mentioning the name of Jesus” (Ibid. 61). Political parties have become skillful in tailoring rhetoric for both broadcasting and “narrowcasting.” Rhetoric used in national campaigns must have wide appeal. “Compassionate conservatism,” a George W. Bush campaign slogan in 2000, is the most important recent example of rhetoric that builds beyond the base to other religiously inclined groups. According those close to the Bush campaign, politically motivated evangelicals were not the primary target for “compassionate conservatism.” Instead, this rhetoric was aimed at Catholics, suburban women, and minorities – all groups with a culture of support for those in need (Kuo 2006: 60-61; Morris and Slater 2006: 96-98). The constant reiteration of the term “strong leader” is another example of rhetoric for broadcasting. Political parties attempt to place their issues and candidates on the popular 28 end of three important polarities in American political culture: strength-weakness, honesty-corruption, and belonging-separation. Of these three, the strength-weakness dimension may be particularly meaningful to white evangelical Protestants, who are sensitive to the discipline required to overcome temptations of the flesh and other moral weaknesses. But the appearance and reference to “strength” clearly also resonates far beyond the evangelical Protestant community, particularly during periods of international challenge and war.16 Through the use of surveys, focus groups, and by drawing on the knowledge of culturally sensitive local informants, the Republican Party has developed techniques for tailoring messages for sub-cultural constituencies. Thus, Catholic audiences for Republican politicians hear the word “scripture” instead of “Bible” and the phrase “social renewal” rather than “moral decline,” while evangelical Protestant audiences typically hear the opposite terms. The phrase “culture of life” crosses religious cultures, but it has special meaning for Catholics, because it repeats a key term in Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, “Evangelium vitae.” In general, Republicans attempt to guard against selfrighteous and haughty-sounding rhetoric when communicating with Catholics, because this language and tonality is reminiscent of the Southern Baptist culture that many Catholics grew up distrusting (Morris and Slater 2006: 99-100).17 Policies and Patronage. Parties in power have two key forms of patronage to bestow: appointments to office and funding of policies supported by constituency groups. The Bush Administration used each of these tools to cement the party-movement system, although its priorities have been more closely aligned with other Republican 29 constituencies: wealthy donors, the corporate community, military contractors, foreign policy hawks, and small business owners. Some 2600 political appointees were at work in the Bush Administration before the 2004 election (Barr 2004). These appointees do not include members of blue-ribbon commissions or delegations. It is impossible to know how many appointees, commission members, or members of delegations were closely associated with the religious Right, because most appointees do not advertise their connections to controversial organizations. Some high-profile appointees had close ties, including the first Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, Kay James Cole (former vice president of the Family Research Council and Dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University), and Mark Gerson, the presidential speechwriter. Christian conservatives have been particularly interested in judicial appointees and in policy arenas close to the moral-values agenda, and they have gained some important appointees in these areas. Early appointees of the Bush Administration included Michael McConnell, an opponent of the separation of church and state, to the federal bench; religious Right activist Eric W. Treene as special counsel in the Justice Department for religious discrimination, and several religious Right leaders as members of a delegation to change UN policy on abortion. The two Supreme Court justice appointments were conservative Catholics and members of the Federalist Society, an association of religious and political conservatives. 18 The Bush Administration initially indicated ambitious plans to provide federal funding for faith-based organizations involved in social services. This funding could have served, not only as a contributor to helping the poor, but as a source of funds to 30 evangelical churches. Allocated funds failed to live up to expectations. The Bush Administration originally promised a “Compassion Capital Fund” for faith-based organizations at a level of $200 million per year, but this fund was cut down to $30 million in later appropriations (Kuo 2006: 212). The fund functioned as a venture capital source for charities and represented all of the new funding received by faith-based organizations. The funds, although theoretically open to representatives of all faiths through peer review, went almost exclusively to evangelical Christian organizations (ibid. 215-216).19 A second policy initiative, the Healthy Marriage Initiative, received a higher level of funding ($150 million annually) with bipartisan support to promote education about the benefits of marriage and skills for creating strong marriages (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2007).20 The Social Movement Organizations In the years 1976-1989, religious Right leaders adopted the classical social movement stance as challengers of authority, even as leading members were becoming incorporated as part of the Republican governing coalition. In the mature partymovement system of the 1990s and 2000s, social movement organizations continued to mobilize conservative Christians through fundraising appeals and newsletters that cast the forces of secular liberalism as ascendant and intent on the destruction of religious and family values. However, the position of national social movement organizations shifted subtly in the institutionalized party-movement system. The national social movement organizations became a more coordinated and cooperative partner of the Republican Party electoral/governing organization. Facing upwards toward party elites, social 31 movement organizations acted as pressure groups advocating appointments and policy changes. Facing downwards toward the base, they acted as conduits for party messages to activist members of local church communities. From the Christian conservative social base, two layers of politically engaged activists can be defined. The “activist periphery” has been estimated at four million people (Green 2000). The members of this activist periphery provide material support for religious Right movement organizations through donations and purchases, and by providing an audience for revenue-producing Christian television and radio programs. They provide the human energy for political activities, ranging from letter writing to “get-out-the-vote” campaigns to pro-Administration demonstrations. Closer to the center of the movement is a more fully engaged “activist core,” which numbers closer to 200,000 (Green 2000). These engaged activists follow politics closely, participate in movement activities on a regular basis, and donate at higher levels to movement organizations. Theologically and politically conservative, they tend to be better educated and more affluent than evangelicals generally (ibid.). While media figures such as James Dobson and Pat Robertson are the identifiable faces of the religious Right, the real power of the movement lies in its organizational diversity and dynamism (Stevens 2001) -- and in the networks that connect its organizations to one another and to governmental institutions and the Republican Party. Nearly a dozen distinct types of Christian conservative social movement organizations can be identified, each with a different role within the movement as a whole. These organizations lie on a continuum of more religious to more political in orientation, and on a scale of more local to more national in scope. 32 The more religious organizations are local churches and national denominational organizations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Pentecostal Church International, whose leaders identify with and informally promote Republican Party positions on the moral-values agenda. The National Association of Evangelicals arguably also fits in this category. More political arms of these primarily religious organizations include local activist groups whose members meet informally for political discussion and action. Many of the most effective movement organizations mix spiritual reflection and inspiration with political action. These include the media personalities, such as James Dobson and Pat Robertson, who have large television and radio audiences, and the media outlets that constitute the public face of the movement. They also include the national movement organizations, such as the Christian Coalition of America, Concerned Women for America, the Traditional Values Coalition, the Catholic Alliance, and Vision America. These national organizations provide forums, working groups, newsletters, and fund-raising appeals to support political action. These organizations are organized by and are vehicles for top movement leaders. Among the larger organizations, membership numbers in the high tens of thousands. Like most American interest groups, these are membership and mailing list organizations, and do not hold regular face-to-face meetings in local or state chapters (Skocpol 2003). Their strength comes from dissemination of information and from their capacity to collect of donations. They typically hold national meetings once or twice a year in which prominent movement and political leaders speak and workshops are held on issues of interest to members.21 33 Special interest organizations focus on single issues (or a narrow set of related issues) of interest to conservative Christians. These include research and lobbying organizations, such as the American Center for Law and Justice, which prosecutes church and state issues, and the Home School Legal Defense Association. Other notable special interest organizations include the Eagle Forum and National Right-to-Life Committee, focusing on the abortion issue, and the Family Research Council, supporting “traditional families.” Special interest organizations exist in every issue domain of interest to Christian conservatives. Only a few, such as Operation Save America, retain a commitment to direct action. Closer to the centers of political power, some social movement organizations are directly embedded within governing institutions and policy-making networks. Christian fellowships exist in many organizations of government, including the Air Force Academy (U.S. Air Force 2005) and the Pentagon (Sharlet 2006). Daily bible study was held also at the U.S. Department of Justice during the first George W. Bush Administration (Christian Century 2001). A cross-institutional Christian fellowship of Republican leaders gathers at “the Cedars” mansion in suburban Virginia (Kuo 2006: 91-92). Some of the fellowships, such as Christian Embassy, which is a significant presence in the military, are explicitly political in support of both social movement and Republican Party objectives. Many of these Christian fellowships are apolitical in orientation and incorporate members of both political parties. At the same time, personal ties forged through Christian fellowships have generated many mentoring relationships and “bonds of loyalty and mutual commitment that have been fundamental to evangelicals’ political expression” – and influence (Lindsay 2007). Because Christian fellowships unite 34 officials across bureaucratic lines, they can become a powerful force of informal organization and career mobility. Christian elite policy discussion networks provide forums for consensus-building and elite cohesion across institutional sectors. The most important of these organizations is the secretive Council for National Policy, founded by Rev. Timothy LeHaye in 1981. The Council meets three times a year and publishes a weekly newsletter and semi-annual journal. In the recent past, Council membership has included CEOs of major American corporations, top Republican officials and Congressmen, and leaders of religious Right social movement organizations, such as Sam Moore, Sun Myung Moon, Pat Robertson, Rousas J. Rushdoony, Phyllis Schafley, Jay Sekulow, Louis Sheldon, and Don Wildmon (Kirkpatrick 2004). Other integrating organizations are part of the broader conservative movement and consequently tend to focus more on economic and national security policy than social issues. They include leaders of religious Right social movement organizations as members or regular invitees. These groups include the Conservative Political Action Conference and the Americans for Tax Relief’s “Wednesday Group.” The participation of Christian conservative leaders in these meetings helps to integrate social conservatives into the broader conservative movement and its networks (Cassidy 2005). Social movement organizations are, in principle, able to address a wider range of issues than party leaders, because they are not required to worry as much about alienating moderates. Nevertheless, national social movement organizations have focused on issues that are advantageous to the national Republican Party. Our analysis of Christian conservative websites in early 2007 indicates that the issues of abortion and 35 homosexuality received the most attention, as one would expect in a coordinated system. Second-tier issues of public expression of religious symbols, support for “traditional families,” and opposition to judicial activism were addressed, but less frequently. Politically unpopular “moral values” issues, such as restriction on stem cell research, teen sexual abstinence, pornography, and divorce laws were, by contrast, rarely mentioned. _______________________________________________________________________ _ Table 4 Topics on Christian Conservative Websites (January 2007) AFA/ Nat. Christian Focus Assoc. Traditional Concerned Coalition on the Evang. Values Women of Legal Family News Coalition America Action Action . Links. Homosexuality/ Gay Rights 11 3 0 >20 6 Abortion 4 >20 0 1 0 Judicial Activism 1 2 1 5 2 Public Religion 4 2 2 1 1 Traditional Families 0 3 1 4 1 Terrorism 7 0 0 0 0 Stem Cell Research 2 0 0 1 0 Pornography 0 2 0 0 0 Sexual Abstinence 1 0 0 0 0 Divorce Laws 0 0 0 0 0 Poverty 0 0 0 0 0 _______________________________________________________________________ _ Following the lead of Republican Party politicians, the leaders of national social movement organizations have learned to allow hosts on talk radio, leaders of single-issue organizations, and ministers in church pulpits to advocate positions that appeal to moralvalues minorities, thereby gaining the support of religious conservatives who feel 36 strongly about these issues, while retaining distance in their public pronouncements from positions that have limited appeal in the broader population. The Republican Party-Evangelical Protestant “Political Machine” Closely connected to the leaders of religious Right organizations, pastors of politically engaged evangelical churches became a new type of precinct captain during the 1980s and 1990s, and church congregants the deliverable voters. As compared to earlier political machines, the Republican Party-Christian conservative “machine” has had the advantage of bringing voters together weekly for experiences that build collective solidarity, with the pastor as the focal point of the spiritual benefits of community. By encouraging congregants to become politically active and by strongly supporting Republican positions on moral-values issues (without, for the most part, advocating particular candidates), pastors placed the expressed values of the Republican Party in a symbolic position as instruments of God’s divine plan. The material benefits of this exchange have been substantial for the Republican Party, given that about one-third of its vote typically comes from self-described evangelical Protestants. The benefits to Christians are primarily symbolic, however, and consist of supporting politicians who they perceive as encouraging the country along a righteous path. Christian conservatives believe that Republicans share their commitments and priorities, and Republican politicians provide signals that they do in fact share these commitments and priorities (even if they prefer not to talk about them to non-religious audiences). Relatively few material rewards have followed from the involvement of evangelical Christians in political life. Activists close to the Christian 37 conservative movement have been appointed to state and federal offices, commissions, and delegations, and a few Christian charities have received federal funds. But gay rights are gaining ground, abortion remains legal, and prayer in schools continues to be proscribed. Intelligent design has failed to gain many adherents, and stem cell research, although opposed by President Bush, is gaining ground in the states. Throughout the period, conservative Protestants have consistently wanted more legislatively than the Party has been willing or able to deliver. The one-sided material exchange of the Republican-Christian conservative alliance is a significant difference from political machines of the past. Indeed, the urban Democratic voters of the past were dependent on ward leaders primarily for material benefits: patronage jobs in government, interventions with the police and other government agencies, and family support in hard times. The mechanisms used to deliver the vote also differ from those of the past. Rather than relying solely on face-to-face contacts, social movement organizations have distributed voting guides to congregants, and drawn connections between Christian belief and party platforms through their mailers, conferences, radio and television shows, and websites. Here, too, the symbolic dimension looms large. We can speak of the Republican-Christian conservative organization as a new kind of political machine only with qualification, because, unlike the earlier urban Democratic machines, loyalty has been conditional and negotiated, rather than habitual. The Republican Party must contend with movement leaders who are capable of withdrawing support in the face of embarrassing scandals or failure to act on candidates for appointment or favored legislation. More important, issues of competence and policy 38 failure can influence conservative Christians who are less firmly attached to movement organizations. Lower income evangelicals are only weakly connected to the “machine”; they are very often more concerned about jobs and health care than about abortion and gay rights (Greeley and Hout 2006). The weekly co-presence of the church community is an important organizational asset, when compared to the loose associations of the urban Democratic neighborhood-based machines, but the symbolic content of the party-church base connection is a weakness of the Republican-Christian machine when compared to the material interdependencies of its urban Democratic predecessors (cf. R. Brooks 2005). CONCLUSION By effectively deploying its organizational resources and cultural capital, the Republican Party has demonstrated a capacity for activating and suppressing social conflicts along politically profitable lines. At the same time, policy failures, scandals, and a newly competitive opposition have created obstacles to Republican Party strategists’ aspirations for a stable, long-term electoral advantage. Two developments pose salient problems for the alliance. The first is the development of divisions within the movement concerning a future policy agenda. The second is the effort of the Democratic Party leadership to neutralize the Republican advantage on issues of “faith and family.” The environment has become a wedge issue within the movement. In recent years, influential evangelical ministers have begun to argue that the environment is a “values issue.” This position is known within the Christian conservative community as 39 “creation care.” A National Association of Evangelicals vice-president observed that creation care is “not a Red State issue or a Blue State issue or a green issue. It’s a spiritual issue” (Cizik, quoted in Breslau and Brant 2006). Younger movement leaders are promoting environmental stewardship even as they risk alienating older and more prominent movement leaders by doing so. A rift is consequently developing within the movement about the importance of environmental issues, with the “Old Guard” continuing to insist on the priority of traditional family and social issue concerns.22 This division could widen as evidence accumulates on the consequences of global warming. To a lesser degree, other issues that do not fit the traditional agenda of the religious Right have also emerged in the evangelical Protestant community. The most important of these is poverty. Rick Warren, the best-selling author and pastor of a Southern California mega-church, has called for a new “war on global poverty,” and his views have been widely circulated in the Christian conservative community (Rossi 2005). Other prominent evangelical ministers, including Pat Robertson, have begun to raise money to alleviate poverty in the developing world. As new issues challenge the unity of the conservative Christian movement, Democratic leaders have shown the capacity to adapt to the popularity of the old issues. They have become more comfortable presenting their own religious and moral values to counter this area of Republican strength. Prior to the 2006 congressional elections, Party leaders recruited candidates who could speak authentically about faith and family issues. Several candidates, including Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Rep. Heath Shuler in North Carolina, Rep. Brad Ellsworth in Indiana, and Gov. Ted Strickland in Ohio, campaigned on pro-life, pro-marriage platforms. Leading Democratic candidates for 40 president also began to appear on stages of mega-churches and to discuss the role of religion and traditional family values in their lives (Totten 2006). Through these efforts, Democrats have shown the capacity to reconnect with religiously oriented ethnic minority voters, and to compete again for moderate white Catholic voters. Nevertheless, it would be premature to predict the demise of the party-movement system. In 2006, white evangelical Protestants continued to vote for Republican candidates at historically consistent levels – 70 percent of the time -- and their turnout remained high. Most evangelicals have shown no signs of changing their minds about abortion or traditional families, and Republican outreach to conservative churches remains impressive. Internal divisions within the movement over the environment and poverty could eventually lead to issue expansion -- and therefore greater movement strength. Similarly, the efforts of Democratic candidates to reconnect with moderate religious voters could run into opposition among the party’s liberal activists and donors. Moral-values politics in the United States remains partly about status. White evangelical Protestants gain symbolic support for their vision of self and society through successful political activity. At the same time, moral-value politics can no longer be interpreted as simply the expression of status group conflict in American society; instead, the positions and sentiments at the center of these politics have become incorporated into a well-financed and well-run Party-led organizational structure. For a generation, the carefully-scripted symbolic environment of moral-values politics and the social networks that carry these symbols have persisted even in the face of economic downturns, scandals, and policy disappointments. On the basis of this evidence, political sociologists do well to acknowledge the durability and strength of the bonds between white 41 evangelical Protestants, religious Right social movement organizations, and the Republican Party. In the context of continuing national security threats, these bonds could plausibly grow stronger in the future, rather than weaker. 42 1 Notes We would like to thank Nancy Ammerman, John C. Green, Michael Hout, Michael Lindsay, Michele Renee Salzman, Brad Wilcox, Clyde Wilcox, and Rhys Williams for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 Of the two leading American proponents of the status group interpretation of right-wing politics, only Lipset originally called attention to conservative Protestantism as a source: “One important factor affecting (the) lack of tolerance in American life is the basic strain of Protestant puritanical morality which has always existed in this country. Americans believe that there is a fundamental difference between right and wrong, that right must be supported, and that wrong must be suppressed, that error and evil have no rights against the truth” (Lipset 1955 [1962]: 317). By 1962, Hofstadter had also recognized the importance of religious fundamentalism: “If (my original) essay were to be rewritten today, there is one force in American life, hardly more than hinted at in my original formulation, that would now loom very large indeed, and that is fundamentalism…To understand the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind, we need to understand the history of fundamentalism… To the three sources of right-wing sentiment that are commonly enumerated – isolationism…ethnic prejudice, and old-fashioned “liberal” economics – one must add the fundamentalist revolt against modernity, and not by any means as minor partner (Hofstadter 1962: 102-103). 3 “Caring and compassion” seems, at first glance, to be associated with liberal and Catholic religious sensibilities, but the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (2005) poll showed that evangelicals were somewhat more likely than other groups to mention this quality as a meaning of “moral values.” 4 Abortion, gay rights, and, more recently, immigration rights advocates are arguably exceptions to this rule. These are more contested terrains. Abortion rights advocates have lost ground in the states (Schroedel 2000), while gay rights advocates have had successes in more liberal and Democratic coastal states (Meyer 2007: chap. 8). 5 Hout and Greeley (2006) show that evangelicals are a growing segment among families earning $100,000 or more annually, and these people vote Republican by margins of nearly 9 to 1. Moreover, white evangelicals earning $30,000 or less are evenly split politically (see also Bartels 2005). However, most evangelicals earned between $30,000 and $75,000 per year and were not college graduates. These people have been socially conservative and heavily Republican, albeit not as Republican as wealthy evangelicals (Frank 2006). 6 Green, Guth and Wilcox (1998) based their conclusion on interviews with Republican Party state officials and grassroots activists. They defined “dominant” influence as a working majority in the principal state party organization. They defined “substantial” influence as at least one-quarter of state party positions held by social conservative activists. See also Rozell and Wilcox (1995). 7 Evangelical Christianity, while similar in cultural expectations related to the regulation of self in an (ideally) ascetic community, operates on a distinctly different emotional frequency from other forms of ascetic Christianity. It is a direct descendant of the spirit-filled Christianity of Anne Hutchinson, the Quakers, and the preachers of the First Great Awakening, each one a reaction to repressive and exclusionary Puritanism. As in earlier forms of spirit-filled Christianity, contemporary evangelical Christianity brings a far more optimistic and emotionally-open approach to Christian activity in the world, and is most attractive to less educated churchgoers living in small towns and new suburban areas (Marsden 2006; Morone 2003: chap. 2). 8 Scales were created using factor analyses. Scales, eigenvalues, and factor loadings are as follows: Gender roles (.91): women should take care of the home, not the country (.40), women are not suited for politics (.38), women should help their husbands’ careers first (.55), and it is better for the man to work and the woman to stay home with children (.55). Heterosexual relations (.91): acceptability of premarital sex (.51), acceptability of teen sex (.63), acceptability of extramarital sex (.53). Homosexual relations (1.08): acceptability of homosexual relations (one variable). Abortion (3.16): abortion in case of low income (.83), abortion in case of unmarried people (.86), abortion in case of unwanted pregnancy (.85), abortion in case of rape (.60), abortion in case of birth defect (.61), abortion allowed in any case (.82). End-of-Life (2.05): allow incurable patients to die (.37), suicide allowed in case of incurable disease (.47), suicide allowed in case of bankruptcy (.80), suicide allowed in case of dishonored family (.80), suicide allowed for those tired of living (.64). Religiosity (1.08): self-identified intensity of devotion (..65), frequency of church attendance (.51), frequency of prayer (.62). 9 Independent variables in this analysis included the following: party (dummy coded with “independent” as reference category); religion (evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, seculars, and others – dummy coded with “others” as reference category); religiosity (see fn. 5 above); race (white and black only); sex; education (less than high school, high school graduate, some college, college graduate; post-graduate – ordinal variable); urbanism (largest 12 cities, other large cities, suburbs, small towns, unincorporated areas, and rural areas – dummy coded with “small towns” as reference category); Southern residence; Occupation (professional, manager, white collar, blue collar – dummy coded with “white collar” as reference category; Age (continuous variable); Presidential term (Reagan – 1980-88; Bush I – 1989-92; Clinton – 1993-2000; Bush II – 2001-2004); Racial attitudes (scale measuring social distance from African-Americans); Moral Absolutism (item measuring belief in the Bible as the literal word of God). 10 Better measures of moral absolutism examine R’s willingness to change moral views in the face of changing circumstances. Investigation of NES data suggests that better measures of moral absolutism are stronger predictors of conservative attitudes than religiosity or family ideologies. See Brint and Abrutyn (2007). 11 Such outreach efforts were by no means limited to Republicans. Bill Clinton was a regular at the National Prayer Breakfast and other public events featuring worship. Clinton won a majority of evangelical votes by focusing on religious voters from the bottom half of the income distribution. 12 In this analysis, ethno-religious categories were based on a modified version of the Pew framework, which divides the three major white Christian groups (evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics) by frequency of church attendance (regular, irregular, and infrequent). Ethno-religious categories include also Black Protestants, Latino Protestants, Latino Catholics, Jews, members of “other faiths,” and unaffiliated and secular people. Among the 73 Pew Research Center items we examined, 30 items (41%) were polarized (4 items) or borderline polarized (26 items) by ethno-religious category. Regular church attending white evangelical Protestants divided on one side and unaffiliated and secular people on the other on 17 of these issues (23% of the total). These latter issues involved homosexuality, abortion, free speech, the importance of religion, national security, and the Iraq War. Among the 64 General Social Survey items we examined, 26 items (40% of the total) were polarized (2 items) or borderline polarized (24 items) by ethno-religious identification. Again, the most common of these divisions were between regular church-attending white evangelical Protestants and unaffiliated and secular people. These two groups were divided on 17 items (20% of the total) involving gender roles, abortion, birth control, premarital sex, pornography, prayer in school, confidence in TV, and confidence in the military. The National Election Study data were anomalous in showing more frequent patterns of polarization. Of the 60 NES items we examined, more than half were polarized (3) or borderline polarized (31) by ethno-religious categories. Fully one-third of the items divided regular church-attending white evangelical Protestants from unaffiliated and secular people on items involving traditional families, gender roles, desired qualities in children, abortion, homosexuality, immigration, the importance of religion, the role of religion in forming morality, the use of military force, and strength of patriotic feelings. The 2004 NES sample included an unusually high proportion of lower-income and less educated white evangelical Protestants. The differences between NES and the other two surveys could consequently be due, at least in part, to sampling variation. 13 A legal strategy sometimes used to help mobilize the vote in non-consensus, but winnable issue campaigns is to put measures on the ballot that will increase voter turnout among constituencies who feel strongly about the issue. The gay marriage initiatives that appeared on the ballot in 11 states in 2004 are an example of the effective use of this strategy. A similar strategy was pursued by the Republican Party in 2006. This strategy included initiatives on gay marriage in eight states (including two Southern states with tightly contested Senatorial elections), as well as initiatives to restrict abortion in three states and to ban illegal immigration in two Southwestern states. 14 Particularly effective issues of this type often have as the target of policy interventions a group of small size and relatively little power. The issue of gay marriage is a contentious issue that has played favorably for the Republican-Christian conservative electoral system. At least two-thirds of Americans are opposed to gay marriage. White evangelicals are almost unanimously opposed and half of these conservative religious voters tell polling organizations that they feel “very strongly” about the issue. In addition, homosexuals are a relatively small part of the population – less than five percent -- but make up a non-negligible part of the Democratic coalition. Democratic support for initiatives to ban gay marriage will be tempered for that reason. At the same time, supporters of gay marriage will naturally exercise their First Amendment rights to support efforts to legalize gay marriage, thereby visually activating the opposition of “values voters” to gay influence. The widely disseminated images of parades of gay activists in San Francisco, some dressed as transvestites, following the legalization of gay marriage served as a powerful stimulus to anti-gay backlash among conservative Christians in 2004. 15 This analysis is based on content analysis of eight speeches given to religious Right organizations such as the Traditional Values Summit and the Christian Coalition by eight Republican speakers (Pres. George W. Bush, Gov. Mitt Romney, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. George Allen, Sen. Sam Brownback, Rep. Mike Pence, and Press Secretary Tony Snow). It also includes speeches given to the Conservative Political Action Council (CPAC) by seven Republican speakers (Vice President Dick Cheney, Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. George Allen, Rep. Tom DeLay, Rep. Sam Johnson, Rep. Mike Pence, and Rep. Paul Ryan). The analysis of speeches to broader conservative audiences also includes speeches given by Sen. Rick Santorum to the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Newt Gingrich to the Wednesday morning club, and Rep. Tom DeLay to Vision America. We are grateful to Carol Kay for making recordings and transcripts of several of these speeches available for analysis. 16 Our analysis of national security items from the Pew Research Center and the National Election Surveys show a similar pattern, albeit with religiosity (measured by frequency of church attendance) playing a limited explanatory role and conservative ideology playing a more important role (Brint and Abrutyn 2007). During the years of the Bush presidency, evangelical Protestants and those with “absolutist” moral outlooks were significantly more likely than others to favor overwhelming military action to defeat terrorism, to justify unilateralism over multilateralism, to support higher levels of defense spending, and to favor restrictions on civil liberties in the name of national security (ibid.). For conservative Christians, we hypothesize that national security issues elicit, at a deep psychological level, a similar set of responses as do perceptions of disorder generally – feelings of moral superiority to those perceived as threatening, protective concerns about the national community led by co-believers, and determination to effect change. Connections between moral values and national security have been encouraged by Republican Party and social movement leaders. 17 Similarly, advertisements that would be considered excessive in a national campaign can be effective when targeted to a narrower population. One 2004 poster familiar to members of conservative evangelical churches, for example, showed a picture of a gay couple with the caption “allowed” and next to it a picture of the Bible with the caption “banned.” By defining and directing rhetoric at several levels within the polity, based on breadth of appeal of particular symbols and terms, the party is capable of aggregating preferences within a pluralistic society, while restricting exposure to messages with limited appeal to constituencies who are most sympathetic to them. 18 One effect of these appointments has been to shift the policy emphases in some key governmental agencies charged with protecting the rights of minorities. Justice Department divisions, for example, have turned their attention to cases involving religious discrimination and away from cases involving racial discrimination (Lewis 2007). With a new conservative majority, the Supreme Court limited the right of citizens to challenge the Bush Administration’s program of support for social service programs offered by religious organizations (Greenhouse and Kirkpatrick 2007). 19 According to Kuo, grant referees were supposed to review the application in a religiously neutral fashion, and assign each applicant a score on a range of 1-100. But their biases were transparent. Many of the grant-winning organizations that rose to the top were politically friendly to the Administration. One reviewer told Kuo, that reviewers were instructed to look at proposals against a list of criteria and score accordingly. “But when I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero.” (Kuo 2006: 215-216). 20 Not surprisingly, religious groups began to hire lobbyists to pursue Congressional earmarks during this period. Congress earmarked $150 million for religious groups during the session that included the 2004 election (Henriques and Lehren 2007). 21 In the past, these organizations were directly involved in political campaigns, but this activity has been restricted by the IRS and has led to the creation of legal action arms of the organizations, whose income is subject to for-profit tax laws and regulation. 22 In 2006, a coalition of evangelicals issued “A Call to Action” on global warming. This effort was undermined by the withdrawal of support of prominent “old-line” evangelical leaders, including James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and Louis Shelton (Simon 2007). References Baker, Wayne E. 2005. America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barr, Stephen. 2004. “Appointees Everywhere, But Try to Count Them.” The Washington Post (October 17): C02. Bartels, Larry M. 2005. “What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Washington, DC. September. Beisel, Nicola. 1990. “Class, Culture, and Campaigns Against Vice in Three American Cities, 18721892.” American Sociological Review 55: 44-62. Bennett, William J. 1993. The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, vol. 1. Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation and Empower America. Bentham, Jeremy. [1789] 1973. The Utilitarians. Introduction to the Principles of Morality and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham and On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Bolzendahl, Catherine and Clem Brooks. 2005. “Polarization, Secularization, or Differences as Usual? The Denominational Cleavage in U.S. Social Attitudes since the 1970s.” Sociological Quarterly 46: 47-78. Breslau, Karen and Martha Brant. 2006. “Eco-Evangelism: God’s Green Soldiers.” Newsweek (Feb. 5): www.msnbc.msn.com/id11179145/site/newsweek. Brint, Steven. 1994. In an Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brint, Steven and Seth Abrutyn. 2007. “The Political Attitudes of Evangelical Christians. 1980-2004.” Unpublished paper, Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside. Brooks, Clem. 2002. “Religion, Politics, and Concern with the Decline of the Family.” American Sociological Review 67: 191-211. Brooks, Clem and Jeff Manza. 2004. “A Great Divide? Religion and Political Change in U.S. National Elections 1972-2000.” Sociological Quarterly 45: 421-450. Brooks, Rosa. 2005. “The Politics of Faith: Can Democrats Get It Right?” Los Angeles Times (November 17). www.statesman.com. Buber, Martin. [1923] 1958. I and Thou. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Tr. Ronald Gregor Smith. Cassidy, John. 2005. “Wednesdays with Grover.” The New Yorker (July 25). www.newyorker.com. Democracy Corps. 2005. Reclaiming the White Catholic Vote. (March). Washington, DC: Democracy Corps. Domhoff, G. William. 2002. Who Rules America? Power and Politics, 4th ed.. New York: McGrawHill. Durkheim, Emile. [1893]. 1997. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. Easton, Nina J. 2000. Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade. New York: Simon and Schuster. Edsall, Thomas B. 1985. The New Politics of Inequality. New York: W.W. Norton. Evans, John H. 1996. “’Culture War’ or Status Group Ideology as the Basis of US Moral Politics.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 16: 15-34. Entwistle, Doris, Karl L. Alexander, and Linda Steffel Olson. 1997. Children, Schools, and Inequality. Boulder: Westview Press. Frank, Thomas. 2006. “Class is Dismissed.” www.tcfrank.com/dismissed.pdf. Gopoian, David and Ralph Whitehead, Jr. 2005. “Will the Real White Working Class Stand Up?” www.emergingdemocraticpartyweblog/donkeyrising/archives/001317.phd. October 27. Greeley, Andrew and Michael Hout. 2006. The Truth about Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Green, John C. 2000. “The Christian Right at the Millenium.” www.ajc.org/IntheMedia/Pubinterreligious.asp?did=139&pid=56. Green, John C., Corwin E. Smidt, James L. Guth, and Lyman A. Kellstadt. 2005. “The American Religious Landscape and the 2004 Presidential Vote.” Washington: The Pew Forum. www.pewforum.org. Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner Research. 2005. Faith and Family in America. Washington, DC: Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner Research. (October 19). Greenhouse, Linda and David D. Kirkpatrick. 2007. “Justices Loosen Ad Restrictions on Campaign Law.” The New York Times (June 26): A1. Gusfield, Joseph. 1963. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Harris Interactive. 2004. “What Did Voters Really Mean When They Said “Moral Values” Were Important in Deciding Who to Vote for in the U.S. Presidential Election?” www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll. Hauser, Marc D. 2006. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. New York: Harper Collins. Henriques, Diana B. and Andrew W. Lehren. 2007. “Religious Groups Reaping Share of Federal Aid for Pet Projects.” The New York Times (May 13): A1, 16. Hofstadter, Richard. [1955]. 1963. “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt.” Pp. 75-96 in Daniel Bell (ed.) The Radical Right. New York: Doubleday. _________________. 1963. “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt: A Postscript.” Pp. 97-104 in Daniel Bell (ed.) The Radical Right. New York: Doubleday. Hobbs, Frank. 2005. Examining American Household Composition: 1990 to 2000. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Census 2000 Special Reports CENSR-24. Hunter, James Davison. 1992. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books. Jenkins, J. Craig, David Jacobs, and Jon Agnone. 2003. “Political Opportunities and African American Protest 1948-1997.” American Journal of Sociology 109: 277-303. Kant, Immanuel. [1784]. 1985. “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment? New York: Macmillan and London: CollierMacmillan. Kirkpatrick, David. 2004. “Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy.” New York Times (August 28): A10. Kuo, David. 2006. Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. New York: Free Press. Langer, Gary and Joel Cohen. 2005. “Voters and Values in the 2004 Election.” Public Opinion Quarterly 69: 744-759. Layman, Geoffrey. 2001. The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Lindsay, D. Michael. 2007. “Politics as the Construction of Relations: Conservative Christian Religious Identity and Political Expression.” Unpublished paper, Department of Sociology, Rice University. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1955. “Three Decades of the Radical Right: Coughlinites, McCarthyites, and Birchers.” Pp. 373-446 in Daniel Bell (ed.) The Radical Right. New York: Doubleday. Loftus, Jeri. 2001. “America’s Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 to 1998.” American Sociological Review 66: 762-782. Marsden, George M. 2006. Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Martin, Robert W. 2004. “Apostolic Leaders Given Exclusive White House Briefing.” www.ninetyandmore.com/archives. Meyer, David S. 2007. The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Morone, James. 2000. Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Morris, James and Wayne Slater. 2006. The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power. New York: Crown. Pew Research Center. 2005. “Mapping the Political Landscape 2005.” www.pewresearch.org. Piven, Frances Fox and Richard A. Cloward. 1982. The New Class War: Reagan’s Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences. New York: Pantheon Books. Presser, Stanley and Linda Stinson. 1998. “Data Collection Method and Social Desirability Bias in Self-Reported Religious Attendance.” American Sociological Review 63: 134-45. Rossi, Holly Liebowitz. 2005. “Evangelicals Embrace New Global Priorities.” www.beliefnet.com/story/168/story_16822_1.html. Schroedel, Jean Reith. 2000. Is the Fetus a Person? A Comparison of Policies across the Fifty States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sharlet, Jeffrey. 2003. “Jesus Plus Nothing.” Harpers Magazine (March). www.harpersmagazine.org/jesusplusnothing.html. __________________. 2006. “Inside Christian Embassy.” www.theraveler.org/archives/timely_02761.php. Simon, Stephanie. 2007. “Evangelical Agenda Fight Is Heating Up.” Los Angeles Times (March 21): A1 ff. Skocpol, Theda. 2003. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Smith, Adam. [1759]. 1976. The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics. Smith, Christian S. et al. 1998. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stevens, Mitchell L. 2001. “The Organizational Vitality of Conservative Protestantism.” Social Structure and Organizations Revisited 19: 337-360. Totten, Mark. 2006. “A New Agenda for U.S. Evangelicals.” The Christian Science Monitor (December 18). www.csmonitor.com/2006/12211218/p09s02-coop.html. Tumulty, Karen and Matthew Cooper. 2005. “What Does Bush Owe the Religious Right?” Time (January 30). United States Air Force Headquarters Review Group. 2005. The Report of the Headquarters Review Group Concerning the Religious Climate at the U.S. Air Force Academy. www.af/pdf/HQ_Review_Group_Report.pdf United States Department of Health and Human Services. 2007. The Healthy Marriage Intiative. www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage. Waite, Linda and Maggie Gallagher. 2000. The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilcox, W. Bradford. 2006. Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Woodberry, Robert D. and Christian S. Smith. 1998. “Fundamentalism et al.: Conservative Protestants in America.” Annual Review of Sociology 24: 25-56.